Riverbed Enhances its Partner Program to Improve Partner Opportunities and Reward Investments in New Competencies

SAN FRANCISCO—November 25, 2013— Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD), the leader in application performance infrastructure, today announced important improvements to its partner program that will simplify processes, training and competency certification to help partners capitalize on new market prospects and accelerate their growth. The new program reinforces that Riverbed is committed to the channel with increased investment and focus on its partners' go-to-market efforts.

Enhanced partner benefits. Partners who invest in certifications and training will receive increased benefits, with enhanced features to reward high performance and growth.

Simplifying business processes. Riverbed has improved sales opportunity workflow and policies and is implementing a Deal Desk to drive best practice sales engagements globally. Riverbed is also aligning opportunities and leads to partners with a certified solutions focus. In addition, new partner dashboards and quarterly reporting will provide partners with up-to-date status on program compliance, discount levels per product, opportunity tracking and more.

Streamlining training and certification. Partners can take advantage of updated online sales and technical pre-sales training on all Riverbed products and solutions for accreditation. Riverbed is investing in additional virtual labs, field roadshows and advanced certification training for both pre-sales and post-sales.

Changing to a new competency model. Riverbed is also moving from a traditional revenue-attainment pyramid model to a competency model. This will allow the company to align its investments and resources to partners that either have a specific solution focus or can go wide and deep with Riverbed solutions.

The four competencies as part of the 2014 program are WAN Optimization, Storage Delivery, Application Delivery and Performance Management. Partners must be certified on the products that are part of a specific competency in order to receive program benefits relating to those products.

Simplifying partner levels. In addition, Riverbed has simplified the program by reducing the previous four partner levels down to three:

Elite Partners - These partners at the highest level show commitment to the breadth and depth of Riverbed solutions and are required to have a minimum of three competencies in addition to a bookings requirement.

Premier Partners - These partners are making investments to develop a minimum core competency in a particular product solution or solutions.

Authorized Partners - Partners at this level are authorized to resell Riverbed products and services, but have minimal training requirements and receive the lowest-level benefits.

"This is an exciting time for Riverbed and our partners," said David Peranich, president, Worldwide Field Operations at Riverbed Technology. "We are investing in key areas to simplify the program, improve partner opportunities and differentiate and reward partners based on their competency and investment in Riverbed products and solutions. We are making these enhancements to accelerate growth, expand into new markets and better serve our customers."

Partners Respond

"Riverbed has put tremendous thought into this new program framework and structure," said John Coleman, director of NetComm, Product and Partner Management at CDW. "We are looking forward to continued participation and success as our two companies collaborate to support our joint customers."

"This is a healthy change," said Mike Nowlan, vice president - Security, Virtualization and Networking at Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, a Riverbed partner. "Riverbed has brought on a number of products over the last two years and a program change makes sense. We are seeing other product manufacturers making similar changes."

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to sales growth and expanding into new markets. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced products to meet those needs; the adoption rate of our products; our ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with our distribution partners; our ability to compete in our industry; fluctuations in demand, sales cycles and prices for our products and services; shortages or price fluctuations in our supply chain; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; general political, economic and market conditions and events; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Riverbed's business are set forth in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the period ended December 31, 2012, and our subsequent quarterly reports filed with the SEC. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Any future product, feature or related specification that may be referenced in this release are for information purposes only and are not commitments to deliver any technology or enhancement. Riverbed reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time.

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